


sun in an empty room

by oflights



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Cats, Domestic Fluff, Home, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 19:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oflights/pseuds/oflights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geno adopts a cat for Sidney as a housewarming gift, because that is a completely normal thing to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sun in an empty room

**Author's Note:**

> This was SUPPOSED to be posted yesterday but I dropped the ball, so whatever, here it is. I talked about this with Lacye and Emily and told them I would never write it, and then I did without telling anybody, whoops. This is ridiculous fluff straight from the mind of a crazy cat person, who adores the crazy cat person that undoubtedly lives in Evgeni Malkin. <3333 The title is nabbed from The Weakerthans, natch.
> 
> Thanks to Bridget for getting this in her email, opening it, going "...okay" and then betaing it for me. She best (after me).

Sidney throws himself a housewarming party the day before training camp starts. 

Usually there’s a big team dinner that night anyway, and it’s a good time because everyone has been trickling back into Pittsburgh for days. Now, they are as settled in as Sidney is, or at least as settled in as they’ll dare to be, in the case of the Wilkes-Barre kids.

They’re all invited. Everyone’s invited, basically, from Sidney’s mailwoman to Mario to Potash to Dana to, perhaps ill-advisedly, Pierre McGuire. Sidney’s house is big but it still feels overstuffed, brimming with noise and smells and people laughing as summer starts to fade around them.

Sidney likes his house like this. He likes it so much that he doesn’t even mind going around insisting that he’s really, finally, officially moved in this time, yes it’s for good, no he’s not going to go down the street to borrow a cup of sugar from Nathalie and stay for six months (and that only happened _once_ ).

He has tables set up all over the house and around it, sagging under the weight of food and booze as people wander in and out, and housewarming gifts that Sidney had begged people not to bring. That table makes him sweat to look at, and he’s carefully ignoring it; sometimes he feels like he’s folding under the weight of all the gratitude he has for his team and the wonderful people in his life already. He doesn’t need to pile on gifts.

It’s late when Geno arrives, long past when most of the people with families have started leaving. There is a handful of bachelors and rookies still sprawled out over Sidney’s living room floor, all whispering over Nealer, who had tried to outdrink Scuds and passed out in a pathetic heap shortly thereafter. Paulie had given solemn and warm permission to write all over his face, so the Baby Pens are conferring with the graduates as to what, exactly, to write.

Sidney is skirting on the edges of starting to clean up. He has a service coming tomorrow and doesn’t want to do so much that it looks like he’s ushering the remainders out; it looks like he’ll be stuck with Nealer all night, anyway, but he wants everyone to know they’re welcome to stay as long as they want to. 

It is a relief to hear the doorbell, and more of one to see Geno standing on the front doorstep, holding something behind his back and shifting guiltily. 

Sidney grins and hugs Geno, surprised and happy. Geno had said he would come but then texted with lots of eyeless emoticons, apologizing for being held up.

He starts apologizing again right away. “Sorry, Sid,” Geno says breathlessly. “I was getting present but have to wait long time, then I have to go somewhere to help present and buy more things and—”

“Hey,” Sidney says, pulling back and leading Geno into the house. “It’s fine, there’s still food left and a few people here.” He’s concerned about the present, especially since Geno shuffles along looking nervous and keeping whatever it is hidden behind his back, but he’s more concerned with letting Geno know he can be comfortable here, and not to worry. This is the first time he’s been to Sidney’s new house. It’s kind of a big deal.

“Okay,” Geno says, and Sidney is about to show him the gift table and then go through the rest of the good host ticky boxes (offer a drink, food, the chance to write on Nealer’s face, and a tour of the house, if he wants it). But then Geno turns to him, licks his lips nervously, and says, “Give present first.”

Sidney blinks, and grows steadily more concerned. “Okay? I mean, yeah, that’d be great, thank you so much, you really didn’t have to—”

“Wanted to,” Geno tells him, and he just—totally lights up. It calms Sidney down immediately, and makes him feel like he’s bathed in sunshine. He wants to tip his face up, and he leans in closer without really thinking about it, feeling excited in spite of himself. Geno grins, splitting his face and still just a bit nervous, and then pulls what he’d been hiding behind him out in front of him. 

He sets it on the floor and kneels down, and Sidney is blinking again, because it looks like a—it’s an animal carrier, it’s definitely a plastic container that is used to transport animals. It has holes in the top and a caged front and, when Geno opens the caged front, a small orange cat trots daintily out of it.

Geno starts cooing immediately, scooping the cat up in his hands with practiced abandon. He pops up to his feet, cuddling the cat close to his chest and talking to it lowly in Russian until Sidney can hear it faintly purring. Then, beaming, he slowly holds the cat out towards Sidney, who just stares for a few moments. 

“Um,” Sidney says. Geno’s smile turns fond.

“Is for you!” Geno says. “For new house, so you don’t get lonely.” He looks around the front hallway, littered with the shoes of everyone that’s still here but empty except for them. “Big house for just you.”

“You—” Sidney starts, but Geno pushes the purring cat forward insistently once more, and Sidney takes it on instinct, folding it awkwardly into his arms. It immediately stops purring, blinking up at Sidney with flat amber eyes, then presses two front paws against Sidney’s forearm and flexes, just once.

It feels like a warning. Sidney swallows hard.

“You bought me a cat?” Sidney asks eventually, manfully hiding his wince when the cat does more than just flex at the sound of his voice. 

Geno shakes his head, and Sidney starts to relax—it’s a joke, probably something Max put Geno up to in retaliation for being left off the invite list (not that he could’ve made it anyway, but Sidney had few rules for his party, and one of them was _absolutely no Flyers._ He had tried not to glare too obviously at Lauren’s orange sweater, much to Mario’s amusement). 

But then Geno says, “Not buy, adopt! I was at animal shelter—”

“Geno,” Sidney says disapprovingly. The cat digs its claws in hard, but doesn’t struggle to get out of Sidney’s arms, like it wants to see how much subtle damage it can inflict until one of them breaks first. Sidney ignores the stinging in his skin and narrows his eyes. “I thought—we all had a talk about you going to the shelters every week, remember? It just upsets you, and you already do enough to help, and—” Sidney looks down with a raised eyebrow at the cat casually clawing at his arm.

This is one of the side effects of Geno’s affinity for the animal shelters that they’ve all been waiting for. Nealer is convinced he’s going to walk into Geno’s house someday to find an entire menagerie, and Sidney admits that it’s a fear of his own, second only to his fear that he’ll discover a burgeoning orphanage in Geno’s house on the next day.

That’s why they’ve tried to get Geno to cut down on the visits, or to at least make sure that one of them is always with him when he goes. Not Nealer, who enables him despite any fears, but Paulie or Brooksie or sometimes Sidney, who is just glad that they haven’t put him on orphanage duty (he’d be little to no help there, really).

“Not go every week,” Geno says, rolling his eyes. “Only here for few days, have to go back and visit when I am away so long. But—Sid. Remember Honey?”

Sidney presses his lips together, but nods reluctantly. Honey is a cat that Geno had been in love with for weeks, an enormously chubby thing with a squished face. She had come in to the shelter only a few weeks before last year’s playoffs, which kept Geno at bay; he couldn’t be sure how long he’d stay in Pittsburgh to give her a stable home, and didn’t want to have to take her across the world while she was still acclimating. 

Sidney personally didn’t believe it would be a problem, because Honey loved Geno just as much as he loved her and would follow him to Antarctica if he took her, but he withstood Geno’s sulking with all the grace of a good captain.

Honey got adopted over the summer. Sidney knows because he’d helped arrange it through friends of Mario’s, trying to keep his name out of it but eager to give Geno the good news anyway. Geno had sent him a basket full of lollipop bouquets the next day, which should maybe have clued Sidney in that Geno is prone to giving strange but well-intentioned gifts.

“Before Honey get adopt, she have kittens!” Geno says brightly. “They all get adopt, too. Except Toby.” Geno gestures towards the cat in Sidney’s arms. “This is Toby. Shelter name him.”

That means Geno named him, because Geno names all the animals he gets to know in the shelter. “He best,” Geno adds, as if daring Sidney to argue the point, and Sidney moves to put his hands up peaceably but yelps when Toby digs his claws in and then hops quickly out of Sidney’s hold, taking a fair amount of skin with him.

“I take him to vet today, all checked. He is runt so a little small, but very healthy for runt and clean and good for you,” Geno tells him, watching Toby wander around their legs for a bit before heading slowly towards the living room, stopping to sniff the floor suspiciously. “And I have all supplies for him in my car, I bring them in and help you set up.”

“Geno,” Sidney says. He tries not to look at the four tiny spots of blood beading up on his arm, because he doesn’t want to get pissed off. “This is—this is way too much. You really didn’t have to do this—”

“I tell you, I want to.” Geno rolls his eyes again. “Very hard person to gift for, cannot just get whole candy store every time. You rot only teeth you have left.”

“I will not—okay, no, you’re distracting me on purpose. The point I’m trying to make is that you can’t—people don’t just buy cats for other people as a housewarming gift, it doesn’t work that way.”

“Not buy, _adopt_ ,” Geno says, and when Sidney just levels him with a supremely unimpressed look, Geno shrugs. His eyes are so wide, Sidney is expecting a halo to appear at any moment. “Rescue.”

“I don’t have time for pets,” Sidney tries. Geno just clucks at him, which is infuriating and _not_ charming. “I still don’t even have Sam with me here, with our schedules—”

“Cats easy, take care of self.” Geno narrows his eyes at him. “Take care of you, Sid. And you have housekeeper and million Lemieuxs down the street, can check in and feed like I do for Jeffrey.”

“But—” There are many more reasons why this is a terrible idea. This just isn’t _done._ It’s wrong to encourage this, in any case; this is kind of like driving Geno to a building that has an animal shelter on the first floor and an orphanage on the second floor, and then leaving him there to fall in love a dozen times a minute.

For some reason, though, Sidney’s having a hard time gathering those reasons. It’s not that he’s never been able to out-stubborn Geno before, either. He’s won his share of standoffs, and there’s a reason why he gets called upon to keep Geno in check at the shelter. But right now that feels impossible in the face of Geno’s sunny happiness. Sidney can’t really figure who he’s happy for—Toby or Sidney—but he thinks he’d be able to put his foot down if Geno would yell at him or sulk or something.

Sidney doesn’t even have to sigh out, “Okay.” Geno’s grinning already, because he know he’s won, and heading for the front door again, saying, “I get cat stuff, set up, then you can show me house so I know Toby is in good place.”

“My house is _fine_ ,” Sidney says, trying to sound annoyed. He’s bad at it, though.

By the time Geno’s brought in an ungodly amount of cat equipment (some of which Sidney might actually need to Google) and set it all up, it’s pretty late, and Sidney has to convince Geno to forgo his house inspection to sit down and eat something. He makes Geno a plate in the kitchen, heats it up, and then guides Geno into the living room, where everyone has abandoned their Nealer canvas to play with Toby.

Toby is taking all the attention in stride, so to speak, bathing himself and swiping loftily at Bortuzzo when he tries to pet him before he’s done. He eyes Sidney with the same kind of flat disdain he’d displayed in his arms, but trots right up to Geno and starts rubbing against his legs, purring again in a few moments. The rookies all groan and Paulie looks slightly alarmed, eyeing Sidney and attempting a silent conversation with him.

Sidney suspects that Paulie’s asking if there are dozens of cats out in Geno’s car, and he shakes his head minutely because it’s not that bad. One cat is actually mild in the grander scheme of things; the problem is that Toby’s not going home with Geno. He’s staying here with Sidney, and that just makes very little sense right now. 

“See, Sid?” Geno says, dropping onto the floor and happily letting Toby crawl all over him. “Is good companion.”

“Yeah,” Sidney says, rolling his eyes at Paulie and dropping into one of his armchairs. He is suddenly and definitively exhausted. “You sure you don’t want him?”

He immediately feels bad, because Geno just looks sad at that, eyes and mouth drooping. “Parents come home with me,” Geno says, and Sidney feels worse. “You know Papa is allergic, have to wait until new house is finished for new cat.” 

“Yeah, but then you can have like, ten new cats,” Beau says, and he only quails a little bit under Paulie and Sidney’s responding glares. Sidney is impressed and imagines Beau has been trying to thicken his skin enough to get back on Geno’s line.

“Don’t need ten cats,” Geno says, balking, as if he wouldn’t lead an army of cats back to his house and buy them all the best food and litter and kitty condos, which Sidney suspects he’s done for Toby. “Just one cat is good. Friend for Jeffrey.” He grins at Sidney again. “You will like, promise.”

“For sure,” Sidney says automatically, glancing down at the scratch marks on his arms. The blood is already dried, barely there specks, but Sidney doesn’t know much about cats, really. He doesn’t know how much worse they can do, can only imagine.

Geno keeps pulling cat toys out of his pockets and passing them around so everyone can play with Toby. He keeps ignoring his food until Sidney reaches out with his foot and kicks him lightly in the back; then he takes a bite and eats for a while until Toby comes back over to rub against him. 

After a while, Paulie stands up and says, “Sunshine, you’d better help me get this asshole out to the car, he really clashes with the décor in here.” He gestures to Nealer and Beau gets up slowly, taking a minute to admire the penis he’d artfully drawn across Nealer’s forehead, and then helps Paulie gather him up with the help of Dumo and Despres. 

Sidney follows them out, his help waved off as the rest of the rookies trail after them all like they’re watching the Pied Piper get carried out. He can hear Geno chuckling at them as they go, or maybe at something wonderful that Toby is doing, Sidney’s not sure.

They load Nealer in easily enough and all start saying goodbye and separating, Bortuzzo gathering up the Wilkes-Barre kids to head back to their hotel and Despres and Beau clambering into the back of Paulie’s truck, where Nealer is lying with the passenger seat pushed all the way back. “Check your hangovers at the door tomorrow,” Sidney calls after them, and they all give him grudging, tired agreements. He eyes Nealer, then frowns at Paulie. “If he’s sick tomorrow—”

“He’ll be fine, and if he’s not, G will beat his ass until he can fake it,” Paul says. He gives Sidney a grim sort of smile and then a hug, thumping him hard on the back. “You good?”

“I’m good,” Sidney says, thumping Paulie back. He laughs a little when they pull away. “I have a cat now, though.”

“Could’ve been worse,” Paulie says, and he eyes Nealer, too. “I keep expecting to find a Maserati parked in my driveway some morning, from this idiot.”

“At least you can’t accidentally starve a Maserati or something.”

Paulie rolls his eyes. “Really? You really think you’re that incapable of taking care of a pet? You’re our captain.”

“And you all feed yourselves! Look, it’s not that I’m not a cat person, it’s just—I’m a dog person.” Sidney looks at Beau and Simon, both on their phones and both shamelessly listening to them through the window. “And a rookie person, I guess.” He knocks his fist against the side of Paulie’s car just to watch them jump. 

“Cats are easier,” Paulie says, and it just sounds so reasonable. Everything sounds reasonable coming from Paul, though.

Sidney’s driveway empties and Sidney heads back inside, where Geno is showing Toby his litter box and talking to him softly in Russian. He looks up and smiles when Sidney steps in, then stands up quickly. “Should go now.”

“What?” Sidney asks, not at all panicky but a little disappointed, maybe. It feels like Geno just got here; all they’d talked about was the cat, not the house or the offseason or camp tomorrow or anything written on Nealer’s face. “But—you wanted to see the house.”

“Come back and visit,” Geno says, with promise in his voice. “Want you and Toby to have time alone, so you can be friends.”

Sidney tries not to noticeably glare at Toby, but it’s a close thing.

“I think he like it here,” Geno tells him as Sidney reluctantly walks him out, hugging him maybe a little harder than is necessary. This is the first time he’s seen Geno in months, though, and it’s the start of the season. Usually they talk more than this, to get Geno’s English back into shape and to plan out a little what they want to do with the team. Sidney kind of feels cheated of that, but he doesn’t mention it. 

“That’s good,” Sidney says, a little rueful. “I mean, he should like it here if he’s gonna be here for a long time.”

“Yes,” Geno says, like Sidney just said a very smart thing. “True. Good, Sid. Have a good sleep, see you tomorrow.”

“Bye,” Sidney says, and he watches Geno get into his car and pull out. If he watches the car roll down the street until the taillights fade out of view, well. Nobody is here to witness it.

Except for Toby, of course, who is staring at him when Sidney steps back inside. “What?” Sidney says, and then he rolls his eyes at himself. Toby just watches him, and Sidney sighs, suddenly feeling like his house had grown three sizes in the last minute. “It’s just you and me for the next little while, right?” Sidney says, and he holds out his hand to let Toby sniff at it, like he usually does with animals he doesn’t know well yet.

Toby just stares. He doesn’t sniff, and after a minute he turns around and stalks off into the living room, where he curls up on the couch and ignores Sidney completely.

“Okay,” Sidney says shortly, and he starts getting ready for bed. 

 

For the first few days, Sidney barely realizes that he has a cat. He’s in and out for training camp and therefore barely home, though he’s there enough to set up a feeding schedule that’s easy to stick to, and to sometimes call out for Toby a little balefully.

Toby ignores him. He waits for Sidney to leave the kitchen to eat, spends his days climbing from cabinet to cabinet and curling up in warm, hidden pockets of space Sidney wasn’t sure were even in his house. He only ever finds Toby by searching for him thoroughly, and sometimes the only reason he’s absolutely sure Toby is around is because of the shit he leaves in the litter box for Sidney to scoop.

Sidney is still careful, though, when he leaves and returns to the house, or when he goes out onto the deck for breakfast, wary of anything orange streaking by his feet. He has a large, fenced in backyard that he often thinks would be perfect for Sam, if only he were around enough to hang out with her. It’s a good thing, at least, that that doesn’t seem to be a problem for Toby, who would probably only notice if Sidney had died in the night because his food would be late.

Geno was right in that sense. Cats are easy. Toby doesn’t bite, scratch, pee on him, pee on the carpet, or anything he’d be constantly worrying over with a new puppy in the house. Sometimes he gets caught scratching at the living room furniture, or chewing on the potted plants Sidney keeps around, but Sidney just shoos him away and Toby goes easily, like being in Sidney’s presence isn’t worth getting in good scratching time. Sidney always feels pretty insulted.

That’s pretty much the extent of how he feels about Toby, really. He feels like he’s doing this wrong, and he’s not sure if Toby’s happy or not. When Geno asks how Toby is (and he asks every day), Sidney always says he’s fine, and he _is_ , but he feels like he’s lying.

Geno’s not the only one that checks in on Toby. “Where’s the cat?” Duper demands when he comes over for dinner, pushing Lola at Sidney and moving them all out of the way so Carole-Lyne can carry in a huge tray of salad. Sidney gulps to look at it; he’d worried that he hadn’t made enough food for the entire Dupuis clan, so he hopes the kids really like salad. 

“He’s—around,” Sidney says, trying to hug all the kids with Lola clinging to him like a koala and also getting gently laughed at when he offers to take the tray, too. Duper looks around, taking Sidney at his word, and then hurries off with Kody and Maeva, talking over his shoulder. 

“I can’t _believe_ I missed this, your face must’ve been excellent!” Sidney sighs and goes into the kitchen with Lola, Carole-Lyne and Zoe, getting them all set up with snacks and drinks and wowing the girls with his huge window seat. Duper’s voice fades into a low, warm sound through the walls, audibly mocking. “I wish I had thought of it, I would’ve gotten you a ferret.”

“I want a ferret!” Kody yells, and Duper says, “Next year, promise.” Zoe and Lola both cover their ears quickly as Carole-Lyne starts yelling at him immediately in French. 

Duper goes quiet, concentrating on his hunt, and Sidney is content to putter around the kitchen, telling Carol-Lyne what he made, leaving out what he attempted to make, and enjoying her calm, gentle approval and rebuking her offers of help. “We should go into the dining room soon,” Sidney says, but he kind of likes the way they’re all hanging out in the kitchen, the girls’ feet high off the floor on the window seat and trading Goldfish, Carole-Lyne standing at the island counter with her drink and smiling at him.

She pats his cheek gently and says, “I think we’re okay right here, Sid. Everything smells great,” and Sidney flushes warmly, pleased.

From somewhere deep in Sidney’s house, Maeva shrieks, “Kitty!” and is echoed by Duper. It’s not long before Duper appears in the kitchen with Toby in his arms, clinging to his shoulders and dealing with being gently pet and spoken to in baby talk French, but he bolts as soon as they clear the kitchen door, streaking off in an orange blur that Sidney can’t help taking personally. He’s pretty sure Geno rescued him a Flyers cat.

“He’s not really social,” Sidney says apologetically, feeling a bit like he’s making excuses for a surly, unpleasant significant other. “And I don’t think he knows his name yet, I’ve been trying to practice with him, but.” He shrugs. Toby is never around enough to practice with, though the internet said it was important to repeat a pet’s name a lot until he started responding to the call.

“I’ll get him and we can practice,” Kody says, but Carole-Lyne shoots that down, getting everyone to gather around what Sidney thinks is supposed to be a breakfast nook to eat.

Everyone is squeezed in and warm and talking over each other; there is definitely enough food, even without the salad, and Duper swats him lightly on the back of the head when he admits to worrying. Sidney feels like this is what a house is for, and he had never felt like this any of the other times he’d tried to move out of Mario’s. This is good. 

Toby shows up one more time just as the kids start drooping and Duper and Carole-Lyne reluctantly start gathering stuff up to head home. His appearance energizes them and they swarm him, and though Sidney tenses, Toby just sits there and allows himself to be pet, even pushing his whiskers a little against Lola’s cheek and rubbing his nose against her.

Sidney stares, dumbfounded, until Duper laughs at him. “He’s good with kids,” Duper says. “That’s a good thing.” He makes a ticking clock noise with his mouth that Sidney knows is meant to be his supposed biological clock, until Carole-Lyne smacks him and gets him to stop.

When they’re all gone, Sidney’s house feels big again, and he tries not to think about it as he dutifully cleans up. When the dishwasher is loaded and the stovetop is scrubbed to his satisfaction, Sidney looks for Toby again and sighs when he sees that he has, predictably, disappeared. 

“Toby?” he tries, and it seems to echo, though that’s obviously impossible. Sidney gives up and starts getting ready for bed, trying not to feel small. 

 

The next time he sees Toby for any length of time longer than in passing is when Geno comes over. He has a pizza, which he sets on Sidney’s coffee table, and he says, “Okay, give me grand tour, Sid!” 

The tour gets cut short when Toby wanders out of Sidney’s bedroom, a place Sidney has never, ever seen him set foot in. Geno drops to the floor like he’s on fire and submits happily to being rubbed on and crawled over, and Sidney watches and tries not to be cranky.

“Going good?” Geno asks, and his smile is soft and knowing. Sidney thinks about giving his standard cat answer (“He’s not really social, and we’re still getting used to each other.”) but he thinks Geno’s kind enough to call bullshit without mocking him, like Tanger and Flower have, or without getting angry at him for being a cat failure, hopefully. 

“I don’t think he likes me,” Sidney says. He sits down on the floor, too, and the hallway outside of one of his guest bathrooms is probably a weird place to just be hanging out, something he never would’ve done in his parents’ house or the Lemieuxs’. But maybe it can be something he does in his own house; he’s still getting used to that freedom.

Geno snorts, waving his hand dismissively. “Impossible. Who not like you?”

“Lots of people.” Sidney tries not to sound whiney, but Geno eyes him with amused fondness anyway. “I think that includes Toby. He doesn’t—we never hang out or anything. Not like—” He swallows hard and thinks carefully about what he wants to say next, but says it anyway. “Not like me and Dixi.”

He hears Geno sigh heavily, sadly enough that Sidney already regrets saying anything, but Geno’s hand appears on his knee before he can take it all back, patting him slowly. “I miss, too. Dixi was perfect cat, best.” Sidney glances over and smiles in spite of himself when he sees that Geno is playfully covering Toby’s ears, taking it in stride when Toby nips at his wrist. “Toby different, though. Dixi love everyone, love birds and pizza man and Jeffrey and maybe Sid most of all.”

Sidney shakes his head. “No way. You were always her favorite.” Dixi did like Sidney a lot, though. She would seek out his lap to purr in no matter where Sidney was in Geno’s house, even if he was only there for a few minutes, dropping Geno off or picking Geno up. 

Sometimes Sidney thinks of them out on Geno’s deck, watching Geno struggle with his fancy new grill while Nealer heckled him and Brooksie loudly asked after Geno’s fire extinguisher, with Dixi curled in his lap with his hand buried in her fur, and he feels his throat go just a little tight.

“Maybe,” Geno says, narrowing his eyes, and he strokes at Toby like it’s the easiest thing in the world for him to do. “But she love you. Toby love you too, impossible he can’t. Maybe just not good at show.”

“He’s good at showing it for you,” Sidney says. He has to roll his eyes at himself, because he sounds ridiculous and petty, but Geno just shrugs and gives him a secret smile.

“Yes, but I am special.” Sidney nods, because that is absolutely true; he’s never actually met an animal that didn’t love Geno pretty much instantly, nor one whose love wasn’t returned just as instantly. 

It’s easy for Sidney to build the same rapport with dogs, almost as quickly. He and Sam had been an instant connection from her puppy years, and though he doesn’t see her as much as he wants to, he is always greeted warmly and enthusiastically and he greets her back in the same way; there are few better feelings in the world. Abby and Ben had grown to consider him an extra Lemieux kid during his years there, and he gets more affection from both of them per week than he’s gotten from Toby the entire time they’ve been together.

“Takes time,” Geno says. He’s looking at Sidney like he used to look at Dixi when she brought him a dead bug as a present, soft and affectionate. Sidney watches him continue to pet Toby and is irrationally, ridiculously jealous. He doesn’t want to think about which of them he’s jealous of.

So Sidney gives it time, and nothing changes. He and Toby live virtually separate lives as the preseason starts, then folds into the beginning of the season. Hockey is too consuming and busy to allow him to stay preoccupied with the state of his cat relationship, and the time in between is always stuffed with company. 

His house fills and empties at will, and while his mother clucks disapprovingly at his “open door policy” and the team often gives him shit for it, Sidney likes making everyone feel welcome. He’s felt welcome in theirs for years; he likes being able to return the favor.

Geno comes over way more often than he ever did before, and Sidney’s not going to pretend that’s about anything but Toby. They had been fixtures at each other’s houses when they were both on IR, but back then that meant Mario’s guesthouse and Geno’s place full of hovering Russian family members, all eager to feed or water Sidney at every waking moment. 

When Geno got healthy, they stuck mostly to team gatherings and barbecues, and Sidney still hasn’t lived down missing Geno’s housewarming party because he’d double-booked a fan event. He wonders if Toby is Geno’s revenge. 

Now, Geno tends to just drop by at random, sometimes with food, sometimes with Jeffrey, and once with his mother, who pats Sidney’s cheek and stuffs his freezer with plastic food containers. Sidney welcomes it all and kind of revels in it, making his guest rooms known to Geno and bragging about the guest towels he’d picked out, which might actually be softer than his own towels. 

Seeing Geno more means seeing Toby more, and sometimes they all just hang out on the couch in front of the TV, Toby in a ball between them, Geno petting him absentmindedly. Once, Sidney tries to scratch lightly at Toby’s ears, because he always seems to love with Geno does it, but Toby squirms out from under his hand and gives him such a look of frank disdain that Sidney almost laughs out loud. 

Toby also scoots closer to Geno, tucking in against his thigh and dropping his chin down on his paws so that he can watch Sidney warily, and now Geno laughs heartily, leaning over to squeeze gently at the back of Sidney’s neck and laughing harder at the betrayed look Toby gives him. “Have to be nice to Sid,” Geno says, his voice pitched low and conspiratorial. 

Sidney huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, but they drop quickly when he hears Geno add, “He is my favorite, shh, don’t tell.”

Toby looks totally appalled to Sidney’s eyes, and he has to laugh then, a little nervously. The skin on the back of his neck is warm where Geno had touched it. 

 

 

Their first loss of the season comes pretty early, and in a way, Sidney is glad for that. It’s another bad one, the kind where their run-and-gun style goes horribly wrong and Flower’s shoulders go slumped and painfully unhappy, until nobody can look at him. 

Nobody can really look at each other in the locker room after, and Dan’s mouth is tight and quiet, to the point where Sidney would actually prefer someone yelling at them. He wants to yell a little bit, but he never does, and when he looks at Geno, he just looks too exhausted to muster up the fight. Sidney leaves the team with a solid, meaningful, “See you tomorrow at practice,” and lets them all have the night to sulk alone.

It turns out that that’s the last thing Sidney really wants to do, though. His house feels cavernous and cold when he lets himself into it, and it stays that way no matter how many lights he puts on or how much he tosses his things around to fill the space. 

He trips on one of the many cat toys Geno continues to bring over, and for a second all he wants to do is call Geno, or Tanger, or literally anyone, just for another voice to fill the quiet. He doesn’t, though.

Sidney eats in the living room with the TV on, and it should help, but it really doesn’t. He forces himself to put on his pajamas because he has never wanted to go back to Mario’s more than he does right now, and maybe he won’t do that in pajamas, but that still doesn’t keep his hands from twitching towards the key he still has, the one he should’ve swallowed or tossed into the river. He considers both wildly for a moment, and then rolls his eyes at himself and decides to go to bed.

He’s exhausted, which helps him fall into a fitful sleep fairly quickly. It’s not really a surprise that he wakes up in the middle of the night, but what is a surprise is the cause: sleeping next to him on the bed is a warm, curled up ball of a cat, breathing deeply and pressed against his hip. 

Sidney blinks up at the ceiling, sure he’s dreaming, and coaxes himself back to sleep, but a few hours later when his alarm wakes him up, Toby is still there, and Sidney has to physically force himself not to fistpump and scare him off. 

He feels better equipped to face the day and lead his team at practice, and he wonders if the small cat victory had somehow offset the larger hockey loss. It’s not a victory that lasts, really, because Toby is gone by the time Sidney’s finished brushing his teeth, and he waits for Sidney to leave the kitchen to eat, like always. Sidney is strangely fine with this, and he smiles into his coffee cup on the deck, peeking in at Toby pecking delicately at his food.

He goes to practice smiling, which everybody thinks is weird, except for Geno, who simply sees him and smiles back. 

It progresses in slow, small increments from there. One night, Sidney looks to his left on the couch and Toby is there next to him, not looking at him, just licking his paw and rubbing it thoroughly over his head. Sidney turns quickly back to the TV but feels a smile creeping across his lips. 

When Geno comes over another night, Toby winds all around his legs and then rubs just a bit against Sidney’s legs as he passes him into the kitchen. He and Geno beam at each other, their shared happiness boundless and probably absurd.

Sleeping together becomes a regular thing, though it is never acknowledged. They don’t talk about it, mostly because Toby is a cat and can’t talk, but also because Sidney doesn’t want to upset their delicate equilibrium. A few times, he dares to reach out and stroke across Toby’s curled spine, careful as he can, and he waits with bated breath for Toby to freak out or stalk off. But Toby only slits his eyes open, stares at Sidney for a few moments, and then closes his eyes again. If Sidney strains his ears, he thinks he can hear a faint, light purring sound emanating from deep within his pale little chest.

“How’s the cat?” Duper asks him at lunch one day, and Sidney forgets to be embarrassed when he spends ten minutes babbling about how Toby had been waiting at the window for Sidney to come from practice, and went right to the bedroom for a nap with him. He’d made it look like he was watching birds, but Sidney could tell that the swishing of his tail picked up when Sidney cleared the doorway, and he’d let Sidney rub under his chin until they both fell asleep. 

When he remembers to be embarrassed, Sidney bites his lip and prepares for mockery, but Duper is just grinning broadly at him, like he’s feeling too fond of Sidney to mock him properly and doesn’t see the point of half-assing it right then. This happens sometimes, and never lasts very long, but Sidney grins back and appreciates it for now.

The Penguins fall into a good groove of wins, coupled with a few losses that nobody can be truly ashamed of, and Sidney and Toby’s routines start overlapping more completely. “See?” Geno tells him after their fourth win in a row. “Everything takes time.” He’s echoing Dan from morning skate earlier that day, but Sidney nods anyway, flushed with joy, excited to go back to his house now, even though nobody’s following him home.

 

 

A few nights in a row, he wakes up to Toby sleeping in a ball on his chest, which is new and a little stressful because he has to concentrate on not moving. It happens during their naps, too, one in particular on the couch, significant because of the location, but Sidney is bruised and achy from a back-to-back and couldn’t think of making it to the bedroom just yet.

It is also significant because it is interrupted; it’s not a normal nap at the normal time, and Sidney sleeps through the doorbell but blinks awake when he hears a sharp intake of breath from the end of the couch. Geno comes into view blurrily at first and then slowly swims into focus, but the look on his face is, for once, indecipherable, and though Sidney smiles sleepily at him, it takes him a while to smile back.

“Should lock door,” Geno says after clearing his throat a little gruffly. “Someone come in and steal Toby while you sleep.” Toby’s ears perk up at his name—another cat victory—and he hops off Sidney to gallop towards Geno, rubbing all over his pant legs thoroughly. Sidney takes the opportunity to stretch and yawn, and Geno looks quickly down at Toby.

“Is that why you’re here, to steal Toby?” Sidney asks, voice still a little thick with sleep. He moves to sit up but Geno waves at him, slipping onto couch beneath Sidney’s bent legs and then prodding at him to stretch his feet over Geno’s lap. Toby hops on to Sidney’s ankles and rubs his whole body against Geno’s stomach, purring loudly. 

“Never do that,” Geno says solemnly, looking over at Sidney with something sly in his face. “He love you too much.”

“He loves you too,” Sidney blurts without thinking, just stating simple truth. It’s equally true that Toby loves Geno more than he loves Sidney, but Sidney is still pleased with their progress. 

Geno hums in agreement, soft and gentle. “Yes. Is why I visit him all the time.”

“I like when you visit Toby,” Sidney says, a little drowsily. His feet are comfy and warm and Geno’s presence has always been solid and kind, a little sweet, even when he’s being objectively crazy. Sidney’s starting to think he might be just as crazy, at least when it comes to things like cats or hockey.

“Like to visit you too, all the time,” Geno says lowly, and when Sidney looks at him there is something heavy and significant in his eyes. He squeezes Sidney’s ankle, lets Toby butt his head at his other large palm, and doesn’t look away. 

When Sidney whispers “Me too,” Geno smiles.

 

After their next bad loss, a shit the bed loss, the kind they have to be ashamed about, Sidney and Geno have dinner together and talk about it. The Geno follows Sidney home in his car and kisses him in the hallway, long and slow until Sidney makes them stop because Toby is winding around their legs, meowing at them in greeting, and it’s still weird to kiss in front of him, really.

They are all too tired to do anything but crawl into bed together, Geno a long line of warmth along Sidney’s back, Toby spread across his other side, rolled in against his stomach. This is not something they do every night, or after every loss, but these are the nights that make the other nights better. 

The house fills with Geno’s snores, the squeaky breaths that Sidney can feel vibrating from Toby, until the walls feel warm with them, like he could touch the walls and relive every minute when he’s alone. He’s never really alone again.


End file.
